THE HOSTS – WESTWORLD SEASON 1 EPISODE 10: The Bicameral Mind

Founder and co-host of Cast of Thrones. Say hello on twitter. @rbristow

Well that’s it folks! We made it through the first season of Westworld. As the prophecy foretold, these violent delights did have violent ends.

Maeve finally achieves sentients…or does she, Dolores finds the center of the maze, Ford has an abrupt ending, Bernard gets a second chance at “life”, and we find out the true identity of the Man in Black. It turns out he’s a business man.

This really was an incredibly strong opening season. Every episode was exciting. We don’t know exactly what next season will hold, but its going to be very different based on the ending of season 1!

I wish you had a email we could email our comments to be sent to.
I can’t find an email on this website to your podcast.

What a great season. Great Show. Too bad we wait a year for season 2. Thank you Anthony Hopkins for a great performance.
My review of the show I don’t have time to give in depth. 10/10
I agree that the finale was a little heavy handed for somethings but I think they were doing that for people who aren’t me or those other people who are who unlike me were obsessed enough to go the one of the Westworld websites and enter reveries into the login space and get a page in hexadecimal and translate that to basic to English and get two links that give tiny hints at the future in season 2.

I loved the plot of Meave, Delores and the Logan and William story. I am sad that William turned out to be the Man in Black especially since my pet theory is was before ep9 that Teddy was William. I mean its almost as if Teddy was modeled after him except Teddy is too old a host for that. A good man trying for good but with a buried darkness in him waiting to take over. We’ve seen that in both William and MIB. IT might have still worked if Teddy hadn’t been so old and MIB just the man he grew to be. I’m sad because it would have worked as a theory except for teddy being an original host.

In my secret heart I hope Ford couldn’t really predict what William would do completely and so he replaced him with the first flesh and blood host that had most of his memory and then gave him a narrative to follow for 30 years. Which is why the man in black is so obsessed with coming back to the park, upkeep. The host flesh bodies seem to be like ours, it wouldn’t surprise me with their technology if they designed one that ages at the same rate as a human body. And the daughter you might ask? Ball transplant to the new William. But that’s just my personal dream theory. In that theory Ford shows compassion and puts original William in cryo-suspension instead of killing/replacing him.
But really it is weird how Teddy and William/MIB kind of mirror each other’s character. I wonder what Teddy and Delores’s relationship will be in season 2 now that she’s so different?

One thing I didn’t like was Ford’s view on humanity that he is gifting to the hosts. Humans are bad, they need to die off, and they’re done. I mean yes the hosts have to fight for their right to exist and be free, But a lot of the technology developed by him could be used for Transhuman and posthumanism ideas to enhance the human race by merging it more with technology and even push it beyond its limits. Those ideas wouldn’t see humanity at ware with a synthetic race but becoming like each other and the differences between the normal humans and the synthetic machines become less.
His other point that he seems to be saying that humans as spiritual or more likely mental creatures are bad, not inferior he is actually saying bad, is also flawed. We see some of the worst in humanity in the park, not everyone, there are some families that come for the non-killing and non-tormenting of host, but yes a larger part is something worse. But think about the people who can come to this park. People that can afford to come are the filthy rich that can spend 40,000 a day to play cowboy and kill and have sex and do all kinds of criminal things they couldn’t do in the real world because of laws. People to board of life or have no moral or spiritual grounding to make them decent people.

I’m sur vast majority of humanity witch must be billions struggling to get by day to day wouldn’t be like this because they struggle to live every day. People who have Morales would probably not come here in the first place.
Ford implies that human are bad, but once his robots have free will by the nature of that freewill some of them will choose to do bad things and be selfish just like the humans. It’s not a flaw of the species but of free will itself. If you have it some will choose evil and will try to spread the evil and make it an acceptable norm.

I hope next year we get a more balanced view of both humans and robots as we see the choices they make as things get real in the park. I hope we see bad robots get stopped from doing things by good ones and good humans and robots reach out and try to make things better for everyone.
2018 can’t come fast enough.

For my taste, most Westworld podcasts are largely indistinguishable from one another and are pretty dry. Every week I find the Geekly podcast is such a nice refreshing SPICY MEATBALL in comparison (and I do like my meatballs spicy and not-meat for that matter, but that’s another story).

I really appreciate the goofball lack of seriousness and especially Tim’s comedic timing, although the Rest are on point with the jokes as well. The style may not be everyone’s cup of tea, to which I recommend switching to cheap scotch and a tall glass 😉

I find myself agreeing with everything you guys are on about, from hating Logan at first to liking him in the end, to thinking the show is sorta dumb but also loving it at the same time, to loving Ramin Djawadi’s orchestral version of “Exit Theme” (and listening to it on repeat for 5 days), to having gnawing questions about the inner anatomy and orifices of the robots.

You guys are not afraid to go where other podcasts fear to tread and the results are always so entertaining. I’m glad you have managed to stay Gold Pony Boy, over the years. Thank you, I am a very satisfied Patreon supporter (Cast of Thrones, equally excellent podcast). My only other must listen podcasts are “Decoding Westworld” by Joanna Robinson and Dave Chen, and Bald Move’s “Watching Westworld”. Y’all are the cream of the crop.